Damn it.
Jack also realised it must have taken great restraint for the Japanese soldiers here not to kill the two scouts he’d sent out earlier. To do so would’ve given away their presence, and they’d been tasked with a larger goal: to ambush Jack’s force if it got this far and finish them once and for all.
As the bullets flew and their CIEF companions fell all around them, Rapier, Wolf and Astro fired several grenades from M-60 launchers. Explosions blasted out from the upper level of the tunnel.
Jack and Zoe joined the fight, standing back to back and once again protected by their Warblers, firing up into the shadowy recesses created by the massive spiral-shaped carving of the serpent.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Jack made out figures in the gloom: Japanese special forces troops, all wearing mantis-like night-vision goggles.
Abruptly, a flaring yellow light illuminated the entire tunnel as Rapier let rip with a flamethrower—the fountain of liquid fire sprayed across one whole side of the upper level, engulfing the men up there in fire and blinding the others in their NVGs.
Flaming men fell from their perches.
As the battle raged, Wolf was shot in the forearm, which only seemed to enrage him more, and he unleashed some withering fire upon the Japanese ambush force, nailing every exposed enemy soldier he saw.
It was a bitter fight, with bullets flying, men falling and Rapier’s flamethrower blazing, but in the end the more powerful and accurate shooting of Wolf and Jack’s people plus the added protection of the Warblers overcame the Japanese advantage of surprise.
When the last Japanese man fell wounded from his perch, Rapier finished him off by hand with two brutal blows—the first vicious punch stunned him into silence, the second to the nose killed him.
Wolf’s team had been reduced from eleven to six by the ambush, and all the survivors bar one bore bullet wounds of some kind: Rapier alone was miraculously unhit and unhurt in the melee.
The corpses of twelve Japanese soldiers were found, all dressed in black, all wearing night-vision goggles. Scuba equipment, Defence Force ration packs, water kits and sleeping gear were found up on the second level.
During the fracas, Jack had been hit in his right hand by some ricocheting shards of rock: it bled a lot and when combined with the blood already caked on that arm from the gash to his shoulder from the mini-spikes, Jack’s right arm looked like it had been dipped in a bloodbath.
Zoe, also protected from bullets by her Warbler, had taken a similar ricocheting nick to her right calf. It hurt like hell, but with some painkillers she could still limp along. Lily, thankfully, had ridden out the battle unscathed, huddled behind Jack and Zoe.
She and Rapier were the only ones in the group of survivors somehow not smeared in their own blood.
As the fires petered out and the smoke settled, Jack trudged to the far end of the tunnel, and beheld the third and last stage of this Vertex.
‘The last test,’ he breathed.
Jack stood on a wide balcony cut into the flank of the volcano, looking out over an incredible sight.
The image he’d seen from the digital camera earlier hadn’t done the Third Vertex justice.
The Vertex’s inverted bronze pyramid lorded over the space before him, looming above the scene like a gigantic hovering space craft. As had been the case at the two previous Vertices, it hung from the ceiling of the cavern, suspended above a dark abyss.
But with one key difference.
This pyramid was surrounded by a seething lake of molten lava that flowed over the rim of the abyss in a completely circular lavafall. (A similarly circular tray a short way below the main rim caught the overflowing lava and presumably pumped it back up into the system above.)
The only means of access to the pyramid’s peak was a long tongue-like stone chute that leapt out across the abyss like a half-completed bridge. A small river of lava ran down this chute like a sluice, ending right at the pyramid’s peak, where it plunged in a tiny waterfall into the bottomless abyss.
To get to the chute and the pyramid, Jack saw, required negotiating a high stone walkway and a pair of towers connected by a narrow bridge—all of which stood high above the lake of molten lava.
But it was the object at the very end of this extended pathway, down at lake-level, that captured his attention: a stone dock of some sort.
***
Twenty minutes later, Jack stood on that dock, barely a foot above the glowing lava lake.
The heat from the lake was intense; it burned his throat. Once again he covered his mouth with a moist bandana. The others did the same.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me . . . ’ Zoe said, looking out at the chute.
‘It’s a suicide voyage . . . ’ Rapier said.
‘The Japanese don’t have the same view of suicide that we have in the West,’ Jack said. ‘Never have.’
Two ornate stone canoes sat nestled in separate niches of the dock. Each canoe bore two seats and they appeared to be made of the same lava-resistant stone as the dock; only these stone canoes were clearly designed to float on the lava.
If you pushed one away from the dock, the flow of the lava lake would take you straight into the chute and down its length to the pyramid’s peak.
The only problem: there was no way to guide your canoe back up the sluice-like chute against the flow of lava. The idea was obvious: you floated down the chute, set the Pillar in place, and then you went over the edge into the abyss.
It was a one-way trip.
The Neetha warlock said something in Greek. Lily translated:
‘He says the greatest death of all is one given in honour of Nepthys, the Dark Sun. One of us, he says, should be honoured to die laying this Pillar.’
‘So who’s going to make the ultimate sacrifice, then?’ Rapier snorted.
Jack was staring at the chute and the thin ribbon of lava flowing down it, when someone answered Rapier’s question.
‘I will,’ Wolf said.
The strange thing was, he wasn’t looking at the pyramid when he said it, but rather back the way they had come.
***
It took the group three hours to get them: an hour to hike back to the entrance of the cave system, an hour of searching in the wreck, and an hour to return to the dock—but it was worth it.
As Wolf had hoped they would, in the wreck of the supertanker now resting in the lava lake, sinking inch by painful inch—they had found a pair of winches, equipped with long spools of steel cable.
‘Not a bad idea,’ Jack said, as they tied a cable to each of the two stone canoes.
‘Time check?’ Wolf asked.
Lily checked her watch. ‘11:30. We have thirty-five minutes.’
The two canoes edged out from the dock, floating on the steady current of lava, travelling end-on-end, trailing two steel cables behind them.
Wolf and Jack were in the first boat and nobody was in the second—it was tied to the stern of their canoe with some rope and was there at Jack’s insistence, as a back-up in case of emergency. Each canoe trailed its own separate steel cable, another safety precaution.
Rapier, Astro and Zoe had moved to a little fort-like structure at the top of the staircase immediately behind the dock, and from there they managed the two winches, unspooling the cables that would prevent the canoes from going over the edge—always careful to keep the long swooping cables above the lava. Rapier and Astro held the winch connected to the first canoe; Zoe held the back-up.
Lily remained on the dock, watching Jack intently.
The canoes drifted away from the dock, gliding slowly toward the mouth of the chute at the lip of the massive circular lava fall.
With the aid of the current, the cables, and a pair of stone chunks that Jack and Wolf were using as paddles, they guided their boats in toward the chute. The two men looked like Wild West bandits, with wet bandanas covering their mouths and anti-flash glasses protecting their eyes from the fierce heat all around the
m.
The canoes entered the chute, their flanks brushing against its guttered sides, a perfect fit.
As the two connected boats glided slowly down the chute, Jack saw the great bronze pyramid looming above him. It was utterly huge. He saw its peak at the very end of the chute, squared-off, waiting for its Pillar to he set in place.
Jack also peered out over the side of his canoe—over the rail of the narrow chute—and saw the fathomless abyss beneath the Vertex.
Jesus.
Their canoes approached the end of the chute.
‘Careful now,’ Wolf said into his radio. ‘Ease us close to the edge.’
Rapier and Astro responded by unspooling their winch very slowly, a few inches at a time, until the lead canoe was poised at the very lip of the chute, just above its tiny lavafall and directly underneath the pyramid’s squared-off peak.
During the whole delicate operation that followed, Jack watched his father closely.
Wolf was literally covered in blood—a glistening trickle of the stuff ran from his wounded ear down his neck, and his hands were red from wiping it.
But Wolf didn’t seem to either notice or care about his gruesome appearance, so intently was he focused on the pyramid and the laying of the clear diamond Pillar—which, of course, was now smeared with his bloody fingerprints.
Jack looked at his own dirty body. He was covered in grime and soot and his right hand was slick with blood, too.
What a totally messed up mission this is, he thought.
‘Okay, hold it there!’ Wolf called. ‘We’re in position. What time is it?’
‘11:56,’ Lily said over the radio.
‘Okay. I’m going to set the Pillar in place. . .’
***
Up at the fort-like structure, Zoe watched as the tiny figure of Wolf stood in his canoe and reached up toward the inverted pyramid’s peak.
Beside her, anchoring his winch lazily against a battlement, Rapier smirked ‘Plenty of time.’
Which was precisely when he was shot in the back.
With a powerful shwap! Rapier was thrown violently into the battlement and he lost his grip on the winch. Astro was yanked forward by the sudden extra weight in his hands, but after losing a foot of cable, he managed to regain his grip.
Down at the pyramid’s peak, the first canoe jerked forward, causing Wolf—in the process of laying the Pillar—to lurch toward the abyss, hut he threw out a hand and propped himself up against the pyramid itself, at the same moment that Astro regathered control of the winch cable.
‘What the fu—?’ Wolf growled, only to be cut off by a sizzling burst of automatic gunfire that peppered the pyramid, the canoes and the chute all around him. He dived onto his belly, behind the low stone flanks of the first canoe.
Beside him, Jack whirled, crouched on one knee, searching for the source of the gunfire.
He found it: repeated muzzle-flash tip at the rim of the volcano crater. One last lone Japanese sniper.
Jack fired back, his big Desert Eagle booming, but he knew that accurate pistol-fire was not really possible at this distance.
‘Zoe!’ he called into the radio. ‘Sniper rifle!’
‘On it!’ came the reply.
Up at the fort, two of the three remaining CIEF troopers behind Zoe fell in matching fountains of blood. Ducking the barrage, Zoe wedged her winch against the battlement, swept up her Barrett and tried to locate the sniper.
She found him and unleashed a spray that gave Jack and Wolf some respite. It also gave Astro, gripping the cable attached to their canoe all by himself, some much-needed cover.
Jack’s watch ticked over to 12:03.
He yelled to Wolf, ‘We have to place the Pillar!’
Wolf raised his head—as a Japanese bullet ricocheted off his stone canoe inches away from his face. He ducked again.
They were pinned down.
‘We need to co-ordinate this.’ Jack keyed his radio: ‘Zoe! We need a sustained burst of cover fire so we can plant this Pillar. In three, two, one . . . Now!’
Right on cue, Zoe rose and unleashed some heavy suppressing fire, forcing the Japanese sniper to duck—allowing Wolf a moment to leap up and, with Jack gripping the back of his belt, lean out over the bow of their canoe, out over the end of the chute and the yawning black abyss of the Vertex, and reach up with the cleansed Pillar, stretching, stretching, stretching, and . . .
. . . the Japanese sniper popped up again and loosed another burst of gunfire. Bullets sizzled all around the pyramid, one of them ripping into Wolf’s left shoulder in a sudden burst of blood.
Wolf roared in pain, but as Zoe provided more cover fire from the fort and Jack held him upright, he reached out and jammed the cleansed Pillar up into its matching slot in the peak of the pyramid.
No sooner had Wolf laid the Pillar than Jack yanked him back into the lead canoe and the clock struck 12:05 and the great pyramid began to thrum ominously before—whap!—it sent forth a blinding laser-beam of light down into the abyss. Blazing white light filled the supercavern and then in an instant, it was over.
Jack felt a sense of relief flood over him. They’d survived another Vertex and now all he wanted to do was get out of here.
Wolf, however, wanted to get the Pillar and its reward. Jack vaguely recalled what this Vertex’s reward was—sight, or something like that—but he really didn’t care about that right now.
Their Japanese attacker, having failed to stop them laying the Pillar, was now firing on full-auto both on them and at the others in the fort, more out of frustration than any other reason.
And that was precisely when the sniper hit Astro—twice.
The bullets slammed into his forearm and his leg and he shouted out just as Zoe loosed a brilliantly aimed shot that sent a round driving up into the Japanese sniper’s mouth and out the back of his head, ending his last stand.
Beside her, Astro slumped to the ground, dropping the winch that held the first canoe in place.
With its support cable lost, the lead canoe, already poised precariously at the end of the chute, lurched abruptly.
Jack felt it move beneath him and he saw the future: the canoe was going to tip over the waterfall of lava and plummet into the abyss!
Quick as a cat, he leapt back into the stationary second canoe, turning as he did so to see Wolf snatch the charged Pillar from the pyramid’s peak, and glance down in horror to see that his canoe was moving.
‘Jump!’ Jack called.
With the canoe beneath him only inches from tipping over the lavafall, Wolf took two steps along its length and leapt, arms outstretched. . .
. . . at the same time as Jack reached out from the second canoe, leaning his upper body over its forward edge. . .
. . . and his bloodied hands caught, of all things, the Pillar in Wolf’s right hand.
They ended up in a most unusual position: Jack in the secured second canoe, Wolf in the unsecured first one, his thighs wedged against its stern, both leaning out over the lava in between their boats, joined by their mutual grip on the Pillar.
It was then that something very strange happened to Jack.
A flash of light exploded in his mind’s eye and in a single split second, he went to another place, another time.
It was like a dream, and in it he was falling, falling in slow motion through the air beneath an inverted bronze pyramid.
At first, Jack thought he was reliving his fall from the pyramid at the Second Vertex, but this was different, this Vertex was different.
And this time, an entire aeroplane was falling with him, a huge black 747 that looked like the Halicarnassus, but it only had one wing, not two. The big free-falling 747 obscured Jack’s view of the pyramid above him, a pyramid that grew smaller and smaller as he fell deeper and deeper into the abyss, plummeting to his death—
Jack blinked back to the present, not knowing what the bizarre vision had been, and again found himself clutching the same Pillar as his father, joining them in thei
r separate canoes.
Zoe’s voice shouted in his ear: ‘Hang on, Jack! We’re gonna haul you in!’
A moment later, the two canoes began to move back up the chute, winched in by the second canoe’s cable. Zoe and Rapier wound the winch; the gunshot to Rapier’s back had hit him squarely in his Kevlar spinal guard and so had only felled him.
The 5 Greatest Warriors Page 20